


Salt

by Darkened_Nighteyes (Darkene_Nighteyes)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Sad, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 04:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3276218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkene_Nighteyes/pseuds/Darkened_Nighteyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John tastes salt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt

Whenever he breathed in, he choked. It started out like that. But then it wasn’t just the air any more. Food turned to ashes in his mouth, water tasted salty. It took him four days to realise that it tasted of tears. When he did realise, he scoffed at his own silliness. ‘Come now, John,’ he told himself. ‘Come on now and let it go.’. But he couldn’t. Everything he did. Everything he touched reminded him.

When he sat in his favourite armchair and faced the window it occurred to him that something was missing. A blur that blocked his view. Curly hair that spun outwards and quirked in a way that used to make his stomach to a strange sort of flip that he couldn’t ever place.

As he moved to the kitchen and placed two saucers on the tray next to the bowl of sugars. He looked down and saw that he had poured for two as well. He added sugar to one. Set it to the side. He sipped his own until it was drained and poured again. It tasted bland. Eventually he set down his cup and reached over for the other one. Even as the sugar dulled his taste buds, he revelled in the lack of salt.

It was the refrigerator that eventually broke him. He opened it and there was food. Milk, eggs, cheese. Nothing beyond due date, everything fresh. No body parts. No buckets of blood or little cartons of eyeballs. He made lunch in a robotic kind of manner and when he finally shut the door he sagged to the floor and sobbed. Great, heaving sobs that made his entire body shake and his shoulders heave and his eyes feel as if they were being pushed out of their sockets from the pressure and no amount of crying would ever relieve the pain.

He turned, his back against the fridge and his head between his knees. Elbows resting on them and hands gripping his hair and pulling hard enough to hurt. But never enough. It didn’t hurt enough. Nothing could hurt more than the feeling of missing. Utter and complete _missing_.

He sobbed until he had no more strength left in his body to do so and just slid to the floor completely, curling up into a foetal position.

When Mrs. Hudson found him, she just tugged him up and brought him to bed. She always tucked him in these days. More a housekeeper than a landlady. He didn’t point it out. She never said anything.

When he woke up the next day he went to work for the first time in a week.

**Author's Note:**

> idk why I wrote this. I'm sorry >_>


End file.
